


Jadeite and the Dragon

by FadesInTheSun



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Body Horror, Comedy, Dragons, F/M, Language, Pre-Crystal Tokyo, Senshi & Shitennou Mini Bang 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-23 23:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21328435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadesInTheSun/pseuds/FadesInTheSun
Summary: The great threat against Earth is passing away, and the Senshi and Mamoru can begin to wake the planet from its long sleep.  Except that not everything on the planet is sleeping.  Chasing a missing Senshi, Mars finds that a handful of people have survived outside of Serenity's stasis crystals...Starting with Jadeite.And a dragon.Just pre-Crystal Tokyo; Mars/Jadeite is primary pairing, Mercury/Zoisite a presence.  Einahpets' amazing art.  And, yes, dragons.
Relationships: Hino Rei/Jadeite, Mizuno Ami/Zoisite
Comments: 49
Kudos: 27
Collections: Senshi & Shitennou Reverse Mini Bang 2019





	1. Mars and the Tired Gathering

**Author's Note:**

  * For [einahpets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/einahpets/gifts).

Later, when Mars thought about it, she could pinpoint the exact moment when they could have made other choices, and avoided the trouble. Or maybe it would just have postponed it. Better not to second-guess, anyway.

“I’ve checked all my sensors. It’s not a hardware problem. It’s real.” Mercury bit at her lip, and glanced over to the gathered group. Usagi was fast asleep, leaning against her husband’s side, still glittering silver and white and gold. Every time someone had tried to put her to bed, she’d woken up just long enough to slap at their hands, then passed out again; Mamoru had given up and just taken to carrying her when he needed to move. Their infant daughter was ensconced in his lap, likewise asleep. The rest of them were staying conscious largely by dint of willpower and Venus’s distressingly large stash of energy drinks. Of long-past-their-expiration-date energy drinks. Mamoru had promised that none of them would kill the senshi, but the taste had made Mars entirely distrustful of his optimism.

Venus squinted at Mercury, then took another swallow from the can in front of her, taste or not. “So what you’re saying is—”

“Exactly.” Mercury ducked her head. “There isn’t a great deal of life outside the areas that Serenity and Endymion were able to protect. But there is some. And some of it might be human.”

“That’s not supposed to be possible,” Mars said. “Everything’s supposed to be dead or dormant, unless the Crystals woke it up already.”

Mamoru lifted his free hand for just a moment, before returning it to its business of making sure Chibiusa didn’t roll over into tragedy. “I haven’t done any experiments like that. It’s taken all I’ve had left to make sure we can feed Tokyo.”

Jupiter rubbed at an eye. “I don’t see why you sound so upset,” she said toward Mars. “More life is a _good_ thing. Isn’t it? It means we’re already that much closer to getting the world back to normal.”

The world was never going to get back to normal. Mars frowned, but it was more reflex than anything else; she was too tired to put much effort into it. “Think about it,” she said to Jupiter. “If the attacks killed off everything on Earth except what we were protecting … then anything else alive can’t be _from_ Earth. Somehow, we have an alien infestation the Silver Crystal didn’t scour away.”

Jupiter winced. Venus gave Mars a look that clearly said ‘if I am never sleeping again, neither are you,’ and tipped up her can to try to get the last liquid out of it.

Mercury sighed. “We don’t know that for certain,” she said. “Maybe there were other people with a little bit of power, who were able to channel the Silver and Golden Crystals’ energy to protect smaller areas. Maybe the stasis crystals Serenity built to protect the densest populations had offshoots in places we didn’t expect. Maybe Kinmoku’s rebuilding has gone well enough they could send help. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions; we should go and find out.”

Silence fell for a moment. Mars glanced at Venus, and the dark hollows underneath her fever-bright blue eyes; looked over at Jupiter, her hands in her lap and her hair gone limp and too tired even to smile. At Usagi with her closed eyes, and Mamoru who was all too clearly sitting upright only and exactly as long as the others needed him to.

“If it’s another attack,” she said slowly, “we need to know.”

“But if we take our attention off the plan,” Mamoru said, “if we divert our efforts from reviving croplands around cities, then the taiga and rainforests to get atmospheric renewal going, then a lot of people are going to die.”

“And Serenity won’t let you go anywhere without her right now. And _she’s_ not going anywhere without _us_.” Jupiter found the energy to draw herself up a little more, folding her arms.

“And you,” Venus said firmly, mostly toward Jupiter, “need to sleep. So we need enough of us together that we can take shifts.”

“If three of us are with Serenity and Endymion,” Mercury offered tentatively, “then they can cycle through eight-hour sleep shifts and still leave two of us with them all the time. Which leaves one of us free to—”

“—to work on getting power grids up and running?” Venus suggested.

Mercury shook her head. “Luna and Artemis can do that. They don’t need me there; especially not when there will be engineers who can help, we just need to find them. But I have the best portable sensor and analysis capability. I should be the one to go. And I won’t really be alone; our communicators are still up and running, and if anything happens you can come and find me in an instant.”

That was the moment when Mars should have spoken up. Should have given voice to her misgivings. Should have leaned on her reputation as a psychic, and backed Venus’s plan instead.

Except, of course, that she didn’t know that at the time.

Still. Even if Mercury had won the argument anyway … then when Mercury dropped out of contact two days after her departure, Mars could at least have claimed she told them so.


	2. Jadeite and the Shadow

“He’s headed your way,” said the shadow. “I figured you might want to know.”

“Really?” Jadeite shielded his eyes with a hand and squinted a little, the better to make out the mostly-human figure half-present under the rock ledge. “Are you sure? I mean, I’d like to see him, but he’s literally on the other side of the planet. Practically any direction he goes in is my way, if he keeps going long enough.”

“Really. He stopped off to look in on Kunzite, but Kunzite says that visit was maybe an hour long. And I don’t know about you, but my turf isn’t in good enough shape to let me take a three-thousand-mile trip to stop for coffee.”

Jadeite grimaced. “Do me a favor and don’t mention coffee until and unless it exists again.”

Behind him, Kuroshio rumbled, not quite deep or long enough to cause pebbles to dislodge. “I don’t know what this fixation you have with boiled beans is.”

“You wouldn’t.” Jadeite reached back with his free hand and patted one of Kuroshio’s scales. “Hush, now, the kids are talking. Neph, do you have any idea why he’s headed this far east?”

“Just as a guess,” the shadow said, tilting her head at a knowing angle, “even he probably noticed the rest of the stars coming out. It’s good to see the skies looking the way they should again.”

“That doesn’t make sense, though. If we’re out of the dust cloud—” The words stuck in Jadeite’s throat; he backed off from naming names, and continued. “—the others will be coming out soon, won’t they? At least to have a look around. You’d think he’d want to be able to show off what he’s gotten done.”

Nephrite’s shadow’s eyebrows crept up. Then she lowered them again, and her head with them, to give him a stare and a frown.

Jadeite shifted under the pressure of that gaze. “... I’m missing something again.”

“You,” Nephrite’s shadow said, “are right the fuck _by_ Tokyo right now. Same island chain and everything. Not just the other side of the Atlantic from the absolute opposite side of the world. I wonder why Zoisite might want to pay you a visit. You’re lucky he didn’t pick up Kunzite and take him and that creepy-ass thing with all the heads with him.”

The snort that Kuroshio gave was harsh enough to kick up even wet sand. “Speciesist.”

“I have no problem with your species,” Nephrite’s shadow asserted at the immense ocean-born dragon. “I have a problem with things that try to say hello by stabbing a venomous stinger longer than I am tall through my gut.”

“It’s not like it worked,” Jadeite objected.

“Yeah, because between him and Zoisite’s even-more-pyromaniac-than-Zoisite friend I don’t go anyplace off my territory in person. I don’t see _you_ going and paying Kunzite visits.”

“Point made.” Jadeite ran a hand through his hair, and added, before Kuroshio could say anything valid about that not helping on the respect for giant mythological reptiles front, “So we’ve got a guest coming. And probably then several guests. And no disasters?”

Nephrite’s shadow sobered. “I can’t guarantee anything about no disasters,” she said. “Even with the rest of the stars where we can see them again … we’re still in the middle of a planetwide catastrophe. It’s going to be a while yet before the stars start saying much of anything good.”

“Was worth a try.” Jadeite leaned back against Kuroshio’s side, clear by habit of the trailing tendrils of flame. They didn’t actually hurt to touch, usually, but it was about politeness. “Thanks for the heads-up. Want to check in in another couple of days? Make sure I still have all my limbs, something like that?”

“If work lets me. I want to make a sweep of the old temperate rainforest zones, and a certain lady’s always cranky about checking more than one continent before making a trip back home. She’s pretty attached to her island.” Nephrite’s shadow shrugged. “But I’ll look in when I get a chance. Or if I get a hint that he’s coming out.”

Nephrite didn’t use the name, either. Even if they knew what his reaction would be. Even if they knew they’d have a place with him. It wasn’t something even Kunzite touched often, not since they’d been released from the stones, not since they’d set foot on this barren Earth again.

It would be all right. But it wasn’t there yet. And that made a difference.


	3. Jadeite and the Tiara

Kuroshio stretched out seaward, interrupting the waves and leaving the edge of the beach remarkably still. “So,” he said. “Tokyo is coming out of its shell.”

“Probably.” Jadeite picked his way along the sand, more carefully than he once would have. Bare feet were better for feeling his way through the Earth’s half-sleeping energy patterns. Bare feet were also magnets for the sharpest of broken shells. At least glass splinters and metal shards weren’t so much of a problem these days. “Nephrite says so. Nephrite’s usually right.”

Cat-pupilled violet eyes blinked slowly. Almost always, slowly. They were each as long as Jadeite’s shoulders were broad; blinking was more of a production than it was for a comparatively tiny human. “Then why are we here in the wastelands, instead of going to Tokyo? Surely your Zoisite and his partner are headed there. Not to mention your—”

“If Zoisite’s headed there, he can explain things just fine.” Jadeite squinted down the beach. He could feel something out of true, somewhere; something at the water’s edge. Past Kuroshio’s snout, he thought, and kept walking. “There’s something here. I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t feel like the pressure buildup from a blocked energy current, and it doesn’t feel like a hand going to sleep, the way a drained node does. It feels like… like when an infection’s just getting started. The skin hasn’t gone red yet, nothing looks strange on the surface, and it doesn’t hurt most of the time. It almost doesn’t even feel wrong, so you keep wondering if you felt anything at all. But if you poke at it, it’ll let you know.”

The dubious pause was long enough for Jadeite to take four paces in. “So we’re poking at it,” the dragon observed.

“Of course we are.” Was that something glinting in the water, or just another flicker of wavelets catching the sun? “It’s literally our job.”

“If it were our job, we’d get paid for it.” Kuroshio stretched a little more as Jadeite passed him, lifting his head from the water’s surface, peering over the human’s shoulder.

Definitely something glinting. “We do get paid. You get to be awake, and I get to be alive.”

The dragon yawned ostentatiously, tossing Jadeite’s curls into even more chaos than they’d started out. For once, though, Jadeite wasn’t tempted to pick up his end of the amiable bickering. He knelt down instead, white sleeve draping against the red fabric of his hakama, and reached down into the water.

“What’ve you found?” Kuroshio asked, angling his head for an attempt at a closer look.

Jadeite lifted the curve of gold from the water, bringing clear the gem that matched the deeper tones of Kuroshio’s scales.

A Sailor Senshi’s tiara.

[](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/52dc8d6a-4813-4324-8bc3-d2fcf9e3334c/ddinzsd-a27540d9-642b-4654-979d-c5564e1a952c.jpg/v1/fill/w_800,h_1212,q_75,strp/jadeite_and_the_dragon_by_renimilchstrasse_ddinzsd-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTIxMiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzUyZGM4ZDZhLTQ4MTMtNDMyNC04YmMzLWQyZmNmOWUzMzM0Y1wvZGRpbnpzZC1hMjc1NDBkOS02NDJiLTQ2NTQtOTc5ZC1jNTU2NGUxYTk1MmMuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTgwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.jpI0wOEoJMDl2Aur_WKp-L3S8UTX2Z4tDZxeAGQxGPE)

The dragon fell silent for a moment. Jadeite wondered if he even knew what the piece of jewelry was. But Kuroshio spoke up, only slowly, more considered. “Blue. That shade’s Sailor Mercury, isn’t it? Not Sailor Neptune.”

“Right.” Not the lady of the oceans in specific, not the one Kuroshio might more directly feel some kind of allegiance or kinship to. But the soldier of water. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that the dragon would recognize it. Jadeite shook his head, trying to refocus himself. “Looks like that shell you were talking about is already cracked. But what would she be doing here, of all places? And where’s the rest of her?”

“If it helps,” Kuroshio offered, “I haven’t seen any bones the right size.”

Jadeite winced. “Right. Do me a favor, and _don’t_ say that in front of Zoisite.”

The dragon eyed him. “You want a lot of favors today.”

“It’s a big day.” Jadeite straightened up, the tiara in hand. “And it’s only going to get worse. So I’ll pay you back by not making you be the one to explain this when Zoi shows up.”

“So you claim. That’s awfully far future for you to be planning to keep a promise. Lots of time to forget in.”

Jadeite gave the dragon side-eye, which was harder than usual when the dragon in question occupied that big a slice of his visual field. “A whopping couple of hours. And it lets you go have a talk with your fellow dragon, or something. Since you claim he talks.”

Kuroshio lifted his head and angled it to do his best condescending down-the-snout regard. Whiskers dangled, dripping. “Of course he talks. He just doesn’t talk to _you_.”

“Or in my hearing. Or Nephrite’s. Or Kunzite’s. Ever. I’m still betting you’re making it up.”

“You could ask the Coiled One.”

“Look. There are two of you four that I get along with _just fine_. And then there are two of you four that get confused between ‘murder’ and ‘hello.’ Since I don’t have time to make a trip over to Hawaii right now, I’m not going to go ask Nephrite’s partner. So we’re leaving this as a bet, and you, sir, are trying to change the subject. If you don’t trust me to remember a promise by the time Zoi shows up, what _do_ you want in exchange for not making Zoi fly off the handle any more than he’s going to already?”

“I,” said Kuroshio with injured dignity, “want to stay in the water when you decide we’re searching the beach. That way I get something out of this even if your Zoisite is going to Tokyo, not to here. Which we were both reasonably certain he was going to do a few minutes ago.”

Jadeite lifted his hand; the tiara glinted in the light more brightly now than it had in the water. He wished he had some idea of what to do with it. Trying to put it on seemed incredibly disrespectful; putting it down seemed equally incredibly unwise. “That was before I found this. Even if he goes to Tokyo first, he’ll be trying to go look for her once he finds out she’s missing.”

Kuroshio’s eyes half-lidded. “That seems … optimistic, on his part.”

“If nothing else, he’ll be looking to apologize. Believe me.” Jadeite let out a breath, and turned to survey the beach. Kuroshio was right. There weren’t any bones large enough. There also weren’t any rags of blue, or white, or, thankfully, red. “Okay. Go check out the water. If you don’t find anything directly, see what you can figure out about the currents that might have been carried from; it can’t have gotten lost long ago. If you find her, it’s okay, she’s not the shoot-first type. As long as you don’t start anything, she won’t either.”

“That,” Kuroshio said, “will be a pleasant change.” He shifted weight, and then poured himself smoothly into the water; ripples ran up and splashed over Jadeite’s bare feet as if the dragon were patting him good-bye. Jadeite grinned despite himself, then started working his way along the length of that stretch of sand, searching for anything that might give more hints about the owner of the tiara.

He’d gone down the beach and back four times, each pass further inland, and was partway through the fifth when he found it. The vague feeling that he’d likened to an incipient infection spiked; the sand felt like it was crawling under the soles of his feet. He drew a hissing breath between his teeth, and started to step back—

Blackness spilled up through the sand grains, barely disturbing them, and tossed little tendrils of itself over the foot he hadn’t moved. Looping. Clinging to the earth. He tried to pull backward along the sand, to get out of them; the blackness welled up against his heel, lashed about his ankle. Started spiralling itself up along his calf, barely perceptible to the touch, as if night had condensed itself into cobwebs and learned to crawl.

“No no no.” For an instant he just slapped at his trouser leg, reflex response as if to a particularly determined couple of ants. Then he managed to get some kind of perspective engaged, winced in preparation, and lifted his hands to summon his power. If he could freeze the stuff off—

Encasing his foot and leg in ice stopped it moving, at least. But he could already feel the black stuff heating, somehow. And it didn’t seem to need to melt much of the ice at all to get space for itself to start progressing again.

“Kuroshio!” Jadeite hoped the dragon would be able to hear him, and strengthened the call of his power to freeze the meltwater again. Even if the body he was in was on loan, after a fashion, he really didn’t want to experience having to cut his own leg off at the knee in order to get loose. Especially when the dragon wasn’t exactly at a useful scale to apply a tourniquet. And Zoisite giving first aid was _not_ an idea he wanted to explore.

Somewhere off seaward, water suddenly roared, the familiar sound of it sheeting off the dragon’s back as he surfaced. Jadeite braced with his good leg for what was coming next.

It only _felt_ like half the Pacific, he told himself as the water hit. He was partnered with the dragon. He could take the force of the current without falling down into whatever more of the blackness might be lurking under the rest of the sand. The salt would scour the stuff trapping his leg from his skin, the water would carry it away, it was warm enough to make a pleasant contrast with his halfway freezing his own foot off—

The force of the torrent striking him abated, and Jadeite risked opening his eyes again, not entirely sure when he’d closed them. One step, and a second, and he had to be clear of the patch; but clear of it didn’t mean clear of where it was going, and he kept moving, glancing down at his leg. Red cloth. Fair skin. Good. He half-stumbled, caught himself, headed for the waterline, watching his footing—

Black cloth.

“Shit!”

It was still there, under the fabric. Spreading down his ankle; a tickle at the back of his knee made him hope it hadn’t gotten too far _up_, but an instant later a band from mid-calf to mid-thigh hardened, keeping his knee from bending, sending him sprawling. “Kuroshio! It’s still there!” And getting much too close for comfort. He scrabbled at his sash with the hand not, insanely, still holding the tiara—

“**BURNING MANDALA!**”

His heart tried to stop an instant before the fire engulfed him.

Except that this time, somehow, he didn’t die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention amazing art by Einahpets? Amazing art by Einahpets.


	4. Mars and the Unwelcome Surprise

Fire sang at her command, whirling and focusing in on Mars’ target. On the semblance of the man who had been Endymion’s guardian, the Dark Kingdom’s general, Mamoru’s long-vanished ghostly advisor. On the lie holding Mercury’s tiara.

“Take a _trophy_, will you.” Mars drew her upper lip back from her teeth, scornful, as smoke rose from the fallen figure. She kept it in her peripheral vision as she considered the dragon behind him. Monster? Alien foe? Hypothetical alien ally? It _had_ been attacking whatever was wearing Jadeite’s face; that kept her from lashing out at it at once.

It was kin to the water. Maybe it had an idea where Mercury was. Maybe it could even help her find her.

Or maybe it could spit a firehose of salt water at her.

Mars leapt out of the way, and kept moving. The low cliff she’d stood on gave her a good vantage point, but also took away a wide swath of places she could easily go. What she needed was an outcropping to hide behind. To stay on the rock, and off the sand that unsettled her even from this distance.

The rock wasn’t entirely on her side, either, but at least the threat was more distant here.

She took shelter and glanced back, trying to place the dragon well enough to be able to risk another, quicker shot. It was moving, and it was fast, but it had a lot of length to pull through any particular spot. More disturbing was that the smoking figure was moving again. She’d hoped that she’d been able to do enough damage to whatever corrupt spirit was animating it to loosen its grip on the physical, send it back where it came from and dissolve its body into its component parts. It must have been stronger than she expected.

Well. Of course it was. It took _Mercury_ down. She needed to keep her confidence in check.

Her choice of targets was made for her, then. Take out the thing that had taken Mercury. Maybe the dragon would calm down on realizing she wasn’t after it; if it didn’t, well, it’d be easier to deal with the dragon when she didn’t have to worry about what else would come at her next. And above all, do what Mercury often didn’t: move _fast_. She darted for the far side of the outcropping, pivoting on her heel and bringing her clasped hands down almost before she was clear of the rock. Aiming could happen on the fly. “**FIRE SOUL!**”

The monster wearing someone else’s face gestured, but not in an attack. Water flowed up from the waves and froze solid despite its salt, forming a temporary shield. Mars’ fire melted it, burning through, but it bought enough time for the creature to dive out of the way and into the water.

Water. Ice. Did the tiara let it steal Mercury’s powers, too? Mars fumed, but ducked out of sight, pushing her anger into more fire, beginning to form and draw a bow. Something stronger, faster. Something it wouldn’t be able to shield against.

A voice rumbled from the seaside, loud enough for her to hear clearly. “What do you _mean_, stop?”

She hesitated, just for a moment. Holding where she was.

Something quieter, maybe. And then that voice again. “She’s trying to _kill_ you, in case you didn’t notice.”

No. No listening. No matter how much it sounded like the creatures she fought might be reasoning, listening was what Mercury would’ve done. Listening and hoping were what had gotten her in trouble. She lunged out again, lowering the bow as she did, hunting her target even as she called the words. “**MARS FLAME SNIPER!**”

It was there. Hadn’t ducked for cover. Had its back to her, even as it faced the dragon. Her arrow of flame took it squarely between the shoulderblades. Fire burst, enveloping it, burning, purifying.

It staggered. It did not fall. And this time, when the fire ebbed, it was not smoldering; it stood, turning slowly with its hands lifted and held out to either side. It looked at her with that false face, with the lying eyes she’d destroyed with her own fire before. That the fire was not touching now.

“I’m telling you,” it shouted with Jadeite’s voice, “it wasn’t me!”

The dragon rolled its head as if appealing to the celestial authorities. “That’s going to work. Can I at least soak her a little?”

Mars drew a deep breath. The fire—wasn’t burning him. He and the dragon weren’t attacking. The situation was leaving her unsteady. Which meant there was only one thing to do.

“**START MAKING SENSE!**” she yelled down to them.

Jadeite’s face stayed tipped up toward her for a moment; she could almost imagine the puzzled blink, the shift of expression. And then. Then. He did the unforgivable thing.

She bared teeth and looked for somewhere she could leap down from the cliffside safely, avoiding the sick-feeling sand. If he was still laughing when she got to him, she promised herself, she’d kick off one of her shoes and stab him with the heel.


	5. Jadeite and the Explanations

There were no joyful reunions. There was, on the other hand, no more fire. There was instead a Sailor Senshi pushing Jadeite by force of glare if not by force of hand along the edge of the beach, insisting on moving fast, as if something were hunting them. Given the trap he’d walked into, she might have a point. Kuroshio kept lazy pace with them further out. Deep enough that he could dive in an instant if Mars started to lash out in his direction.

His partner, Jadeite reflected a little ruefully, might just have a better sense for survival than he did.

Once Mars let them stop, Jadeite sank down on the rock, leaning to peer at the formerly-afflicted foot and leg. His skin was reddened, definitely, and the sand and stone hurt a lot more to walk on than he was used to, but there didn’t seem to be outright burns. More like abrasion.

Mars pointed a perfectly manicured finger at him. “I don’t care what your story is,” she said, her consonants bearing a little extra edge. “Where’s Mercury?”

“I don’t know,” Jadeite said. Perfect honesty. If he stuck with perfect honesty, maybe she’d only fry him a _little_ more. “I haven’t seen her. We only just got here ourselves. I found this on the beach. Either the tiara was dropped there, or the waves washed it up. Kuroshio and I were looking for clues when … things … happened.” Perfect honesty did not automatically convey perfect phrasing. And somehow, at this particular moment, Jadeite’s skill with soothing groups seemed to have been left behind somewhere. Maybe Nephrite’s shadow had borrowed it without telling him.

At least that was enough that Mars folded her arms, giving him a merely disapproving look in lieu of an active threat. “Then what were _you_ doing here?”

Jadeite decided that pointing out that that involved giving her his story would be counterproductive, and also, there was still the frying factor. On the other hand, boiling the truth down to a couple of words … how would Kunzite have described it? “Investigating an energy anomaly.”

“You _are_ an energy anomaly.”

He paused, and risked glancing up at her more directly. “Uh. Technically, yeah, I guess so.”

She prodded his hip with the toe of a shoe. Maybe it made her notice that the colors matched, because her frown deepened a moment after. “You look like a dead man.”

“Technically, I kind of _am_ a dead man.”

Her eyes narrowed. Jadeite lifted both hands hastily and added, “That wasn’t a suggestion! It’s. It’s me. When Princess Serenity moved to protect the planet, and—" The name stuck in his throat for a moment. But this was a Senshi. "—Mamoru went to support her? There was a problem. Mamoru could share the energy of the Earth with her. But the energy of the Earth is inherently a moving thing. If it stops moving, if it isn’t distributed, it can go bad—whether the place grows barren or stagnant, it’s not good. Usually the life of the Earth itself takes care of keeping that from being a problem. Right now—somebody needed to actually go deal with the problems as they cropped up, or else Mamoru would run out of energy to offer the Princess, and that … wouldn’t have been good for anybody. So Helios offered us a deal.”

“You’re not allowed to have bodies,” Mars said coldly. “Wasn’t that your _other_ deal? As long as you had a body, it served—”

At least she cut off when Jadeite waved his hands frantically. “That’s why _this_ deal. This body isn’t mine. It belongs to Elysion. I get to use it as long as I’m doing its job. Kuroshio’s job is, among things like transportation, keeping tabs on me for Helios, so if I _stop_ doing Elysion’s work, the deal can get revoked. We’ve all been doing that. Helios woke partners for all four of us, and sent us out to take care of the parts of the Earth we knew best. While you guys were doing the important work, we got to do, you know. Maintenance.”

There was a long pause.

“Kuroshio,” Mars said.

Jadeite offered helpfully, “The big dragon out in the water.”

Mars’ tone sharpened. “You’re _still_ just putting ‘Dark’ on everything and thinking that will work fine for a name.”

“Look! I did _not_ name that current! If _other_ people decided to name something ‘Black Tide,’ and that something happened to be a current strong enough it had a dragon responsible for it, and Helios or Elysion or whatever decided it would be _hilarious_ to assign that dragon to me as a working partner—” Jadeite’s brain caught up to his defensive reactions just in time to bite back the words ‘it’s not my fault.’

Which meant that he shut up just in time to catch Mars stifling a snicker.

Being interested in life, he switched the topic before she could notice he’d heard it. “So anyway. We’ve been keeping the Earth’s energy flowing for Mamoru. And it felt like there was something starting to go wrong here, so I came to take a look. And … stepped in it a little more literally than I’d had in mind. Thanks for burning it off me. I think.”

“I was aiming for you,” Mars pointed out. “I’d be happy to try again, if it helps you so much.”

“Thanks, no.” Jadeite grimaced. “I mean, if it entertains you, that’s great, but you might want it more for fighting whatever messed with Mercury than for fighting us. And speaking of that. Uh. I think they’re probably headed for Tokyo, not for here, but I got news a little while back that Zoisite and his partner are on their way east across Asia. Please don’t try to set them on fire. They both _like_ fire, but they also both like stabbing and biting people.”

“So you’re intervening purely on my behalf,” said Mars.

“Let’s say I’m intervening on behalf of ‘hey maybe we shouldn’t waste more time fighting and having to calm people down and explain everything all over again,’” Jadeite offered.

She waved a hand, the other dropping to her hip. “I haven’t set him on fire yet.”

Jadeite’s frown was rather more perplexed than anything else. “He’s not here yet.”

“Give him time,” Zoisite’s voice lilted from behind Jadeite. “He’ll notice eventually.”

At least Jadeite was still seated. It kept him from looking too undignified when he started. “—don’t _do_ that,” he groaned.

“But it’s so much fun when you never learn,” Zoisite answered, and stepped lightly around Jadeite’s seat to regard Mars from the third point of a more nearly equilateral triangle. “What happened to Sailor Mercury?”

“That,” Mars said tightly, “was _my_ question.”

“Yes, but you put it out there and left it where anyone could pick it up. Jadeite? If you were looking for clues, what have you found?”

“Kuroshio’s been mapping the currents,” Jadeite said, trying his best to ignore anyone and everyone trying to get anyone else’s goat. “If the tiara was washed up, he can figure out where it’s most likely to have started out. I found … weird black stuff under the sand that tried to attack me. That seems pretty likely to be related.”

“Weird black stuff?” Zoisite repeated. “Energy? Stone? Oil? Seaweed?” He paused. “Ants? If it was ants, I wouldn’t blame you for mistaking it for an attack. It’s been so long.”

Jadeite closed his eyes. “It was not ants.”

“There’s nothing living in that sand,” Mars said. “Not even seaweed. _Something’s_ there. But not something alive.”

Another grimace, and Jadeite ran fingertips cautiously over the reddened skin again. “I only barely felt it. Just a little wisp of a touch at the edges. Not till it hardened and locked up, and wouldn’t let me move.”

“Not oil, then. No tar pits for you.” Zoisite turned to prop one foot up on the same rock Jadeite had taken his seat on, and leaned to peer out over the deceptively quiet beach, shading his eyes with one hand as if he felt the need to put on a proper show for some nonexistent film’s audience. Or as if he thought protecting his face from the sun now would save him from burns after flying halfway around the planet. “It went after you. Has it gone after Kuroshio?”

Jadeite twitched despite himself, and glanced hastily out to sea. “Since we haven’t gotten a tidal wave’s worth of thrashing, I’d have to guess no.”

“And nothing troubled the two of you when you came up here along the water’s edge. I don’t think this thing _likes_ water. Whatever it is.”

“It didn’t like fire, either,” Mars said pleasantly. In that way that suggested she was still considering a demonstration that might be pleasant for _her_, anyhow.

“And—” Jadeite twisted and squinted, grimacing. He could see the line of his thrashing and dragging footprints; without seaweed and driftwood to help mark it, the high-tide mark was more difficult, but a couple of bits of weathered glass showed faint glistening greens. “It’s far enough out that the water would cover it when the tide came in. So it can’t dislike water that much.”

“Or it’s mobile,” Zoisite said absently. “Which you proved, didn’t you?”

Jadeite tucked his bare feet further up on the rock.

Zoisite hid his mouth behind a hand, and the small sound that emerged was muffled enough that Jadeite couldn’t accuse him of laughing at him even if everyone knew perfectly well that was what was going on. “Sailor Mars,” he said more clearly a moment later, with either actual respect or a very good fake. (Jadeite knew which he was betting on.) “Jadeite and I were both drawn here by an energy anomaly. You seem to have come here looking for Sailor Mercury. May I ask what Sailor Mercury might have come out here for? Even if your long watch has ended, I’d have expected her skills to be priceless in the aftermath.”

Jadeite was fairly sure that he could feel her glaring at Zoisite, even without turning back to look. At least she wasn’t glaring at him, now. “She thought,” Mars said, “that her scans were picking up life outside the protected zone. And she argued that she’d be the one most safely able to determine whether it was Earth life—plants, animals, people—that had somehow survived on its own … or whether it was an alien infestation, trying to root itself in the planet before its competition woke back up. Maybe if _somebody_ had bothered to come tell us you were out here, she wouldn’t have had to.”

“Maybe we can all agree that we’re all off balance from dealing with things happening outside where we could see,” Jadeite suggested. “If there’s anybody outside of Tokyo who knew you were ready for visitors, it was Helios, and he’s not exactly known for dealing with things on anybody’s schedule but his own.” More importantly, he was conveniently not present for Mars to vent her rage at. He could understand the rage. He could understand how it fueled her. It just … would be a lot better pointed at somebody else. And he was sure that by the time Helios was actually in the same place as Mars, Mercury would be fine and they’d all have Mars calmed down.

He hoped.

“Most concentrations of life that weren’t under your direct protection,” Zoisite said as if the needling had never happened, “should have been Earth life, yes. We shepherded survivors to energy nexus points, when we could, and that kept a little warmth and a few things growing to feed them in those spots. But ‘wispy black prison stuff lurking under a layer of sand’ doesn’t sound like Earth life. So I think, here, and perhaps other places, we can count on alien infestation. If Jadeite and I felt it, then I’m sure the Prince and Princess will have no trouble finding it and burning it out; so other places we can leave to themselves temporarily. The question is Sailor Mercury. Did it catch her? Did it drag her under the sand? Did it drag her somewhere else, across or under the water, and leave a bit of itself behind through accident or injury or as a sentinel?”

Jadeite could think of another alternative … but ‘did it turn her into more of itself?’ was a great way for Mars to try barbecuing both of them again. Presume Mercury was alive. Figure out what they could do for a rescue. That was what they needed to focus on. “Kuroshio didn’t report any evident large-scale disruptions of the sand underwater,” he said instead. “If she was captured and taken somewhere—either there wasn’t a fight, or it was limited to the surface. Or something cleaned up afterward.”

“‘Taken somewhere’ doesn’t help,” said Mars. “Taken _where_. Your dragon’s checking the currents?”

“That’ll help give an origin point if the tiara drifted here,” Jadeite said. “If she was _caught_ here—then whatever took her wouldn’t necessarily have followed the currents. It could’ve gone across them, or flown, or teleported, or something weirder.” He checked his hand carefully for any signs of black flecks before giving in and rubbing at his eyes. “This is impossible. We don’t know where we should be looking, what we should be looking for, what this thing is, or what it can do—”

“Don’t be silly,” Zoisite said, his voice almost musical as he turned back to smile at Jadeite and Mars. He undoubtedly meant it to be a lighthearted thing, something to distract both of them from frustration by giving them a more direct point to be aggravated at. But it didn’t touch his eyes enough for that. It only gave away the strain behind them, a hint of exhaustion. Flying straight, Jadeite thought for the first time. On that temperamental red monster partnered with him. Had he stopped for an hour to talk with Kunzite, like Nephrite’s shadow had suggested? Or had he stopped for that hour because he needed some minimal amount of sleep to keep going?

If Jadeite had only been unsettled by feeling the energy out of place here, how had Zoisite, across the world, been affected worse?

“What it is,” Zoisite continued, “if it’s an alien infestation, is almost certainly an arm or a minion of what the Princess and the Sailor Senshi have been fighting off all this time. Whatever monstrosity has been so vast that it’s required centuries to defeat it, or to move out of its reach.” He swept a small but flowingly ornamented bow toward Sailor Mars. “If you’d be willing to tell us more about it, we’d appreciate that, obviously. But how to find out whether Sailor Mercury is captive here, or where its main body is, is perfectly clear either way.”

Jadeite gave in. “How?” he asked, with appropriate levels of suspicion.

Zoisite looked absolutely beatific. “We’re going to set _everything_ on fire.”


	6. Jadeite and the Plan

The “set everything on fire” plan was one Mars could, apparently, get along with. Jadeite was pretty sure she regretted that it didn’t include setting either of the Shitennou on fire. Not that her fire appeared to burn them anymore, which was a relief, only secondarily because it backed up their explanation about how they’d evaded the curse on them and finally come around to serving their prince in the flesh again. Proof that they probably weren’t evil. Proof that she and the other Senshi would probably not have to kill them all a _third_ time.

Which was probably why she was going along with it. Unless she was hoping their clothes would burst into flame from proximity, or something. Or Zoisite’s hair would.

But she was cooperating enough that maybe things were going a little better now.

“I don’t understand all the details,” Mars admitted as they stood on the (in theory) safe rock, looking out over the sand. “Mercury’s the one who’s good at that. But … you know there’s dust in space, right? Nebulas and things?”

“Very, very fine dust,” Zoisite said. “And very diffuse, so much so that we think of space as a vacuum. Most of what’s in space is hydrogen gas, when there’s anything at all, but the dust is real; tiny flecks of ice, minerals, even some organic compounds. The Solar System’s been passing through a small dust cloud for, oh, tens of thousands of years, and isn’t expected to come out for thousands more.”

Jadeite took his eyes off the sand and stared at Zoisite instead. “Why is this in your head? You’ve barely talked to anybody in centuries, and you _still_ keep this in your head?”

Zoisite rolled his eyes. “Think it through. All of us talk to Nephrite more than anyone else, with the way he can throw his shadow around. What do _you_ keep him interested with?”

“I don’t care,” Mars said before Jadeite could dodge that question himself. “The point is. Giant dust cloud between stars. That’s fine. We’re used to being in it. Except that Mercury was able to pick up on the dust _concentrating itself_ ahead of us. To the point where going through it was going to damage the protective bubble the sun makes around the solar system, and let enough dust get through to push Earth into an ice age, maybe even to do things to the atmosphere … and that was just the physical results. Not the magical results from whatever was using the stuff to attack us. So—”

“So the freeze,” Jadeite said quietly. “So trying to preserve what you could, until we made it out the other side of the problem area. Back into the not … possessed … part of the cloud.”

“Right.” Mars drew a lock of her hair back, sleeking it down to fall correctly with the rest rather than over her face. Pretending she wasn’t fussing with it to give herself something she could control. “We’re good—we’ve fought entire planets before, you know? And this thing wasn’t remotely the most powerful enemy we’ve faced. But it was just physically too _big_ for us to reach all of. So the Outers took on their part of the job, supporting the sun and keeping the other planets and moons and asteroids and everything clear, and we took the complicated part. Earth.”

“But given the tiny size of the particles involved,” Zoisite said quietly, “of course you couldn’t get absolutely all of it. Tons and tons of micron-sized flecks, coming every day for years and decades on end, never stopping. And if even just a few that made it through were contaminated, but they could concentrate themselves again, then in time…” He gestured down at the sand.

Mars sniffed. “Then in time, we set it on fire. I still don’t like this plan of yours, but I’m willing to try. Dust or not, we know that _my_ fire will burn it.”

Zoisite stepped back along the edge of the low cliff and spread his arms. Jadeite stepped back further still, away from the edge altogether, and definitely on the far side of Mars from Zoisite. Out of sight of either of them, he crossed the fingers of his right hand.

This time, now that he wasn’t himself the target, he could see clearly everything she did. The way she snapped out a gloved hand; the way the symbol of her planet manifested in it for an instant, gleaming brightly, then poured out a furious gout of whirling fire. She tamed it to her will, shaped it into a long steady arc of coruscating plasma, even as she drew back her left hand to her heart and a crimson arrow sprang into life. Not her planet’s. Her own.

The gem in her tiara did not gleam a tenth as brightly in the reflection of that light as her eyes did. Her mouth shaped itself into a tiny, tiny smile. Not knowing. Not aggressive. Not arrogant. An artist’s smile; the distant, absent delight that spilled over when someone took something from their mind and heart and spirit and called it pure and perfect into the world.

When the fire lashed out around her, coiled itself into a ring, an orb, into the track of the arrow and into the arrow itself, it was still only that smile that Jadeite saw.

He did not see Zoisite catch the arrow in his hand; he only knew that Zoisite would call it catching it if it succeeded, even if it was only leaving his hand where Mars could aim at it. It was still a brave enough thing that Jadeite would let him get away with it. He heard the yelp and the stagger; caught his breath and whirled—but Zoisite had kept himself from going over the edge, quite, as he regained his balance. The crimson light was still fire enough that he’d managed to hold on to it for an instant; no more than an instant—he fed it from one hand to the other, flinging it in blinding arcs, somehow managing to amplify it each time till Jadeite squeezed his eyes shut as if he were trying to shut out the sun.

He could hear it, when Zoisite started throwing handfuls of Mars’ fire down to the edges of the beach.

That was the plan. Mars might have been able to generate a Mandala large enough to encompass that stretch of sand altogether; but that would have destroyed the creature under the sand without giving them any information. So they left that as backup. And Zoisite caught Mars’ fire instead, and shaped it to cut off the black dust’s possible lines of retreat. To drive it down to the water’s edge, where the tiara had lodged. Into the water. Where, they hoped, it might—having lost its chance to lie in ambush—follow what seemed likely to be its first rule. When in doubt, coalesce. Collect. Join up with other parts of itself.

Lead them back to its main body, and maybe, if they were lucky, to Sailor Mercury too.

The broad arc of fire burned longer than it should have, but then, it was Mars’s fire; it always would. Long enough for Zoisite to guide the next round further in, and the next after that, shrinking the space that whatever-the-thing-was could hide in. Jadeite started making his way along the cliff, toward the water, as Kuroshio flowed closer in to land. A moment later, he could hear Mars’ heels quiet on the rock, following him.

The flames had progressed into the wetter sand before the dust came visible again. A darkness flowing up and out of the beach, rolling silently and swiftly down toward the waves.

Jadeite broke into a run. Kuroshio wove an arch of his scaled back up, and Jadeite leapt for it. The dragon kept that part of his length above the water long enough for Jadeite to lean down low and grip with his arms as well as his legs—then stayed a moment after that, and the unexpected pressure of another human form settled against Jadeite’s back and thighs, against his abraded foot. Slender gloved arms took fierce hold of his waist, and a curtain of soft black hair fell across his arms.

It was a good thing that Kuroshio wasn’t waiting for Jadeite’s word to move, because Jadeite couldn’t remember how to make his mouth and tongue shape consonants. He did at least remember to reach up and catch at the air, so that when the dragon slid down into the water, hunting the undertow to ride it out to sea, he and Mars kept a bubble of something they could breathe.


	7. Mars and the Water

“I don’t like that we can’t see Zoisite.” There were any number of things Mars didn’t like, really, starting with clinging to the back of someone who’d previously kidnapped her (not to mention been killed by her), going on to riding a strange dragon, and capped off by being an unknown distance undersea. All that water. All that pressure. She wasn’t sure she could reach the surface before running out of air. She wasn’t sure how they weren’t running out of air already; there was a bubble of it around their heads but surely it should be going stale by now. And she couldn’t see much of anything at all; the water above them distorted light till they moved through a dim haze of cyans and blues and blacks. Especially blacks. Any of which might conceivably be the thing they were chasing.

But it was _Zoisite_ she cared about not being able to see, obviously.

“He’ll be following us from the air,” Jadeite answered. “The Red Dragon is pretty territorial; it doesn’t like being too close to another dragon. It avoids water when it can get away with it, too. They’ll dive when they have to, not before.”

“I should’ve caught a ride with them.”

“Well, sure, if you wanted Red to try and eat you. It doesn’t like most people, either.”

Mars’ lips tightened irritably. “I can take a dragon.”

“Literally anything I say to that is going to get me in trouble with one or the other of you.” Jadeite, already almost flat against the dragon’s scales, found a way to pull himself down a little closer.

Kuroshio rumbled, and the vibrations shook Mars’ bones, turned themselves into words in her ears. “You could try, ‘you could take _that_ dragon.’”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Jadeite told him, and added with what sounded like it had to be a crooked grin, “Just because you’re one of the biggest currents in this part of the Pacific.”

Somehow, Kuroshio managed to radiate smug _through his scales_. Mars was tempted to blame Mamoru for the dragon’s ability to do that, but she supposed that being a psychic herself, she didn’t have grounds to hold his being one against him.

On the other hand, Mamoru’s abilities would be convenient right now. It’d be a relief to know whether the creepy emptiness of the waters was purely a result of the last thousand years of silence, or whether seaweed or fish or algae should have survived it, and the vacant blue around them was because of something … else. Maybe it was because of the dragons. Maybe fish were smart enough to flee from dragons.

Maybe fish were just … gone, until someone woke them back up.

Unnerved, Rei crouched closer, and almost wished she’d paid more attention to Mamoru and Ami passing speculations and equations and numbers back and forth, figuring out what they’d have to do to help the Earth wake from its long sleep. But then she’d have had to know what kind of fish might be around here to begin with, to be able to pull any real meaning out of their talk. Swordfish? Bonito? She thought she remembered something about hammerhead sharks, but she couldn’t remember whether or not sharks were technically fish.

Then she realized what her thoughts to herself were starting to sound like. Fortunately, a hint of change in the haze ahead distracted her from castigating herself for turning into Venus, or Usagi. “There’s something there,” she said aloud, however unnecessary the words might be. “It looks like—” She squinted. Yes: regular lines, not the weathered and overgrown irregular curves she expected from a thousand films and fishtanks to show themselves under the sea. “—is that a _pyramid_?”

“Not exactly,” said Jadeite, “but sort of. Don’t get your hopes up. This area’s got a lot of sandstone formations. Earthquakes make them break off in straight lines. So it makes flat spaces, and stairsteps, and walls, and things. It usually wasn’t people.”

“Usually.”

Kuroshio’s rumble shook its way through her bones again. “We have palaces.”

“He says that,” Jadeite put in. “I’ve never been able to figure out whether those exist on Earth, or in Elysion, or someplace weirder. Or just in his head.”

“The only reason I’m not throwing you off right now is out of respect for the Senshi.”

“The Senshi appreciates it,” said Mars. She breathed. She tried to take the air being fresh for granted. “Are there supposed to be fish here?”

“Not lately,” Jadeite said. “Maybe soon.”

“So at least that stuff can’t capture a whale shark and try to throw it at us.”

Jadeite twitched, his back and shoulders flinching unthought into her chest and chin. “You think of the _best_ possibilities. If you and Kunzite ever decide to have an optimism contest, I am _running_.”

Mars smirked. Despite the situation, all of a sudden, her mood wasn’t quite as bad as it had been. Still. No sense in getting too far off the topic. “Are there any caves in that thing? Or openings?”

“We’ll have to find out,” Jadeite answered. “I mean, right now we don’t even know how big it is.”

The answer, as it turned out, was “too damn.”

The pyramid shape blurred as they drew closer, as they got a better view of the long sides of the thing. A rounded oblong, high and imposing and menacing, all squared and stepped: some child’s Lego terrain, or a Minecraft algorithm that had worked its way loose into the real world when the crisis took the computers and their networks down. Open flat ribbons like roads coursed along the seafloor at its base. Stairways rose through arches and channeled paths through narrow empty gateways between monolithic walls. Sometimes the stairsteps were almost reasonable to climb, if one involved all four limbs; more often they were half again or twice Mars’ height, heels included.

“Sandstone formations,” she said to Jadeite.

“Let’s hope it’s sandstone formations,” Jadeite answered. “If it’s not … if this is some kind of weird ruin, we don’t need ghosts on top of everything else. If it’s new? One invasion at a time is plenty.”

The echo took Mars almost by surprise; the brief, ghostly awareness that once Jadeite would have counted her presence as an invasion all by itself. But that was a different lifetime altogether, different for both of them. She was still Mars, all right. She always would be. But Rei was the part of her that made the decisions. Rei, who’d grown up part of the world, for all that her stranger senses set her at a distance from people. Neither of them had to be ruled by once-he-would-have.

She didn’t have to trust what he’d do _now_, either. But so far—

So far, he’d been all right.

Maybe he’d keep being all right for a while.

“Your dragon’s slowing down,” she said. Or maybe the huge structure (sandstone formation? Ruin? Giant toy block lump at the bottom of the ocean?) was just so big that even the dragon felt dwarfed by it.

No. Words reverberated through her again. “Too many shadows here. It slipped into one. I can’t see where it went from there.”

Shadows—dark angular things, cast by the stone. She glanced upward without thinking about it. Far overhead, well off to one side, glared a fierce patch of light. Her eyes squeezed shut out of sheer habit. Looking straight at the sun was never a good idea above the water. She didn’t know if it was as bad underneath, but finding out by losing her vision right next to the enemy didn’t seem smart.

Still. There were other senses than sight. Rei drew a breath and let it out, focusing the awareness she’d had before she’d ever seen a talking cat or a transformation pen. It wasn’t close enough to be really clear, and the water was strange to perceive through, but … there were no fish. Kuroshio’s presence felt like the water, only awake; he was no more distraction than the ocean itself was, and could be filtered out the same way. And Jadeite’s presence didn’t set her other senses on edge the way it had an age ago, when he served the Dark Kingdom. He felt like an extension of the earth; awake and perceiving, yes, with emotions and personality of his own, and mutable and self-mutable in ways that were hard to put a finger on. But the earth she’d been accustomed to sensing for ages. Look past the earth, then. Look past the sea. Look for what didn’t belong.

“It’s still moving,” she said at once. “Halfway down the length of this thing, and it’s sliding down levels every time it has cover. It’s _recognizing_ that the shadows give it cover. Using them on purpose. It’s trying to take advantage of the complexity of this thing, to get us distracted by a search.”

Kuroshio sped its passage through the water again, without asking a single question.

“That sounds a lot smarter than this thing did back on the beach,” Jadeite said.

“Maybe it’s getting smarter as it gets closer to where it’s going.”

“Great. If it runs into its main mass, do you think we can stall it by giving it an honorary doctorate?”

“If it’s that smart,” Rei said, “it’d ask us about our accreditation. There! It’s slipping off the stairs. Into that crevice. The long one, leading sort of diagonally away—”

The dragon put on a burst of speed, angling itself to follow—no. No. Rei had told it exactly where the thing was; it moved quickly enough to threaten to intercept. And the little dark cloud in the water reacted, moving quickly enough in turn that it roiled the sediment around it. Leaving a clear sign in its wake.

“Not _that_ smart,” Kuroshio rumbled.

Rei leaned in harder against Jadeite’s back, and freed one hand just long enough to pat the dragon on one of his larger scales. Somehow, the smugness intensified further.

The crevice ended against heavy blocks that looked for all the world like a post-and-lintel gateway narrower than a human body, as if to support Jadeite’s contention that that weird structure had been made by the earth’s shaking, rather than by human or alien hand. The dark cloud flowed over the side of the block, dipped into the space between them, and didn’t return.

It wasn’t wide enough to handle the dragon.

“Dammit.” Jadeite let out a breath, as Kuroshio circled and twined, trying to find a way to shove himself through a space less than a third of his size. “No. No, it’ll have to be the two of us. Can you go up and—”

The strange blue light rippled sharply, and an instant later a sudden downward current flattened the two humans against Kuroshio’s back. Bubbles rushed and tumbled.

“—_eat_ that damned red—”

“Sound carries underwater,” Kuroshio reminded Jadeite.

The sounds that Jadeite made afterward were no less irritated, but at least he was gritting his teeth hard enough that they didn’t have consonants.

The Red Dragon hung in the water, wings spread as if hovering in the air; its jaw opened, maybe as if laughing silently, or maybe as if threatening that he would do any eating here, thank you. Its teeth looked as if a mere human wouldn’t be much of a snack for it. Where Kuroshio’s scales were elegantly formed and patterned, this creature’s were nearly uniformly dark in the red-lacking blue light of the sea. Its body was more enormous and barrel-chested lizard than serpentine smoothness, its batlike wings all elongated bone and smooth membrane. There were claws. And spikes. Rather a lot of spikes.

Zoisite detached himself from the Red and let himself sink in a cloud of fine hair, drifting slowly down to Kuroshio’s depth.

“Centuries,” Mars said. “Centuries and _being dead_. And he still manages two dramatic entrances in one day.”

“Yeah,” Jadeite sighed. “Yeah. He’s… yeah, that’s him.”


	8. Jadeite and the Prayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that "body horror" tag? That would be this chapter.

Mars was the first to duck through the portal, and Jadeite didn’t even try to protest. It made the most sense. She had more power at her fingertips than Jadeite and Zoisite put together, possibly with the dragons thrown in; a current and an island didn’t stack up against a planet. Zoisite followed on her heels. Jadeite hesitated an instant, not letting himself drop so far behind that the air sustaining Mars would dissipate, but—

But long enough to brace himself against the stone to either side and push his bare feet down to the pavement. To feel through them the way that the world lay about them. To reach out to the energy network that sang through the world, already becoming sweeter and more vibrant as Endymion planned its waking.

To become suddenly, sharply aware of the ley line that wound below their feet, below the opening in the rock; and of the other one that crossed it at an angle just ahead.

This place was built on a node. Not a large enough one to have drawn attention, definitely not nearly as impressive as the ones that he’d tapped and woven into protection for the tiny scattered colonies of survivors … but still a nexus of energies, a place where hiding interference with the Earth’s power in that power’s own ambient noise became a possibility.

He couldn’t take the time to examine it for tampering or for subtle corruption. Not yet. Instead, he trusted in that he couldn’t _feel_ corruption inside it, that whatever was setting Mars off wasn’t the Earth itself, and kicked off to follow the other two.

The chamber at the end of the narrow passage was—

No. He couldn’t tell if it was large, or if it was small, or anything else. Because he couldn’t see the walls clearly. Incoherent blackness hovered before them, an opaque miasma that might have been an inch thick, or a yard, or ten. Sometimes it parted enough for the sullen glow flickering around Mars to show the suggestion of a shape; a vague patch of amber that might be rock, perhaps, or maybe an inch or two of sharp shadow as of the edge of a brick or of a fracture line. He couldn’t even be sure where the floor was.

He could, however, be fairly certain that the two ley lines both ran beneath the place. And he would have been willing to bet at _least_ three clever plans that the center of their junction was pinned directly below where Sailor Mercury hovered midwater. Poised perfectly. Only her short hair drifted with the tiny currents stirred by the alien dust’s motion. Her tiara, of course, was missing. Her gloves were decorated with curving elongated spirals and ellipses and parabolas in the same dead black that filled the space around the walls as nearly completely as it filled the space between her eyelids.

“Let her go!” Mars’ impatient stroke of her arms bore her forward with the sense of a challenge. “Or I’ll torch you right into the next life!”

Mercury’s lips curved in a perfect little smile… one that would have belonged better on Beryl’s face than on hers. Jadeite’s blood chilled under his skin colder than the water on it; he reached for the edges of the passageway again, pushing himself down till he could find the stone, could touch the Earth, could reassure himself that it was now and not then and that Mercury was not about to manifest demure little fangs or have horns tear through the delicate-looking fabric over her shoulders.

“You seem to be under the misimpression that we care about life,” Mercury said, and while the words were likewise perfectly formed, with the slightly shy pacing and tiny breathless pauses she so often used, her tone was ... each individual tone was perfect. It was only that it sounded as if something were treading pedals and striking keys to generate them, rather than letting them blend one into another as a human voice should. “Life is a convenience, it’s true. This organism’s operating system is unusually efficient for information processing. But if this organism were killed, we would simply convert its matter and form our own processor, without the inefficiencies of limbs and internal matter-energy conversion organs.”

Zoisite arched a little, pointing his toes and clasping his hands before his chest, but whatever he said was far too quiet to be heard over Sailor Mars.

“**AKURYO TAISAN!**”

Firelight blossomed in the water. But … not actual fire. It dissolved into a mad rush of bubbles and steam, venting upward into the chamber, back into the passageway, sending Mars and Zoisite both tumbling—Jadeite yelped as the scalding stuff burst outward past him, half in pain, from the way it shoved him aside, hammering him into one of the side walls.

“Also,” Sailor Mercury continued, sweet and remote and disjointedly melodic, “we are surrounded by this organism’s element. Not by yours. Your fire cannot prevail against its water.”

Zoisite made a little twist of his body that brought him back in line with Sailor Mercury’s vertical, and this time his voice might still be soft, but there was no-one shouting over him to drown him out. “Against _her_ water.”

Mercury did not answer him. Mars pushed herself up to eye him balefully, but the effort she put in was calibrated to dry land, and she kept herself from doing a somersault only by another quick sharp stroke of her arms. The water near her still bubbled, but more gently now; it had swept the clouds of black dust from the stretch of wall nearest her. She caught Jadeite’s eye instead, and gave him a deliberate frown.

He wondered what that was for. He hadn’t done anything yet for her to consider him the cause of their problems. Maybe that was what she was irritated with him about? Or maybe—

—maybe it wasn’t him she was irritated with?

He tried to remember if he’d ever heard anything she might be trying to call to his mind. What did she know he knew about? The Dark Kingdom, all too well. Nemesis and its children, one of the battles dire enough that Mamoru had called on them to give what aid they could. The plague of black roses, when they had almost lost him—and then watching him break free of the Dead Moon’s nightmares, just as Endymion had been able to stand against Beryl’s and Metallia’s madness in the beginning; but that time Mamoru could wake the Senshi and stand with them, as Endymion hadn’t been able to wake his own guardians—

All of the Senshi.

All of them.

Not just the Inner Senshi.

Mercury’s element was water. But _this_ water was the ocean. This water belonged to another Senshi altogether. Was that what Mars was trying to get at?

How did she think it would help?

Zoisite, meanwhile, was paying no attention to Sailor Mars’s expressions, which was probably still a good way to get himself killed if he wasn’t careful. He wasn’t hovering. No, that was something he saved for above the surface, where it could be his special trick. Below the water, he was managing to stand on the cavern floor, even take a graceful step or two with a little flourish of a gesture. It brought him up in front of Mercury and below her, like a supplicant before some invisible throne.

“Surely,” he said past Mercury, to the blackness around her rather than to her, “if this lady is being of any use to you whatsoever, you owe her at least the respect to treat her _as_ a lady. To give her the courtesy she is due; to speak of her as a being worthy of understanding and praise, and perhaps even to treat her as one.”

“No organism is a being worthy of understanding and praise,” the beautifully disturbing voice answered through Mercury’s body. “That you speak of this one as such an entity says only that either you knowingly lie, or that you are yourself deceived. Organisms form a rotting, distorted blot on the pure beauty of the universe. They can exist only by deceiving, betraying, and murdering one another. All crimes which did not exist until they themselves dreamed them into existence. By rights, you yourself should not exist; you should remedy the flaw of your life, or at the very least, beg the water to do you the kindness of flooding your lungs, to relieve you of the slow self-incineration you work with the oxygen you breathe. With the air you have brought down where it does not belong; even the air and the sea, you betray.”

At least Zoisite was keeping the thing’s attention. Jadeite worked himself down, slowly and silently, into the smallest silhouette he could give: cloth floating in the water, anchored by limbs and joints, and what was undoubtedly a hideously embarrassing fluff of blond hair. Mars and Zoisite had hair long enough to flow beautifully or coil intricately. He just had … fluff. In front of Mars and in his right mind for the first time in eras, and he had to be imitating a dandelion.

He took a careful breath of his not-exactly-betrayed air, and concentrated on the useful part of imitating a dandelion: roots. Touching the stone, and feeling through it. Reaching to analyze the ley lines.

They were still clean, pure. But he could feel what the dust was hiding, now. That it was hollowing out and downward, trying to reach where the lines met. Trying to burrow its way into the network.

It didn’t take much imagination to project what would happen then. The stuff had searched its way across Jadeite’s skin, trying to find an unguarded point to—what? Tap his nervous system? That had to be what it was doing with Mercury. If it could tap the Earth’s own equivalent of a nervous system, if it could travel through that to Endymion…

He thought that Sailor Moon, or whoever Sailor Moon had honed herself into across these last centuries, would be able to purify Endymion and the world once more, and keep the enemy she’d been fighting from any last-minute victory. But doing so when she was still worn down, and without Endymion, and without at least one of her Senshi … he didn’t want to think about what it would cost her. Or what Endymion would do when he understood that cost.

And yet—without _at least one_ of her Senshi.

The dust wasn’t trying to take over Mars. Or Zoisite. Or even making a second try for Jadeite. Why? What was stopping it? It clearly wasn’t that it only wanted Mercury; it’d been happy, on the beach, to go crawling up his leg. That was one thing about the sudden scalding; his foot and ankle didn’t hurt nearly as much as they had, in comparison.

Zoisite was still talking. Still keeping its attention; still buying time. “And yet, this lady is not one to betray. Her loyalty is a song in her heart—oh, forgive the cliche, but for her it is true. She loves her friends with everything she is, and that love elevates her; she loves them enough to be a defender of all her world. She speaks the truth even when those around her would rather not hear it; she wields the arts of healing, rather than those of death—”

“She kills,” Mercury’s voice answered, fluting and delicate and wrong.

“When she’s driven to it,” Zoisite concedes. “But not unless she absolutely must.” He placed a delicate hand over his heart, pale against the green of his improbably neat jacket, and gave one of his most winsome looks upward. “She didn’t even kill _me_, which speaks not volumes but entire libraries for her forgiving nature and self-control.”

Jadeite could feel Mars’ eye-roll without needing to see it.

The thing operating Mercury’s body and voice like a puppet gave Zoisite another of those poison-sweet smiles. “She devours children to feed herself.”

Zoisite’s smooth delivery faltered. “—I—must not have heard you correctly?”

“Children,” Mercury repeated. “She steals the food of the children of peach and cherry; she devours whole the children of bean and rice and wheat, the rent bodies of algae boiled alive, the flesh of creatures of sea and land and air.”

One blink. Two. Finally words again. “—eating,” Zoisite managed. “That’s called eating.”

“Is it less murder only because the creatures do not look like yourself?”

This time the gesture Zoisite made with both hands was not remotely so graceful, and actually propelled him back a step or two in the water before he could catch himself. “You can’t murder _algae_!”

Creatures of the sea. Kuroshio was a creature of Elysion. Jadeite wondered if he could reach the dragon, if Kuroshio and Zoisite’s red dragon together could do something … he couldn’t imagine what. But fire wasn’t cutting it with this thing, not here in this drowning place that was Neptune’s realm, and Jadeite didn’t have anything prepared. They could tackle Mercury directly, but it might be able to infect them by contact (and why wasn’t it trying to infect them anyhow? Was it Mars’ fire that had dissuaded it?), and even if it couldn’t, it might be able to kill its hostage before they could do anything to clear it out of her. Maybe—maybe the tide. Maybe Kuroshio could do something, mingle his water with Mars’ fire to wash Mercury clean?

He stretched his awareness into the network—

—and understood, suddenly, why his ankle didn’t hurt. Why the scalded skin wasn’t screaming at him, demanding attention, howling at the salt in the water.

Twined into the Earth’s sleeping power was the barest hint of healing gold.

He breathed hard, kept it silent, swallowed the lump in his throat … and let the awareness of that gold, of Endymion’s distant touch, change his perspective. They weren’t three bodies and one captive in a chamber full of an ancient and unknowable enemy, with no other hope or help at hand. They weren’t the intruders. _This_ thing was. They were the army of Earth, of the new Silver Millennium, both at once; they had all the world around them on their side. They surrounded this thing, they outnumbered it, not the other way around ...

The plan came to him in an intoxicating rush.

He couldn’t say anything about it, of course. He couldn’t even catch Zoisite’s attention. But Mars glanced his way (of course Mars did; of course she, of all people, could feel the shift in energy), and he caught her eyes and gave a slow and deliberate look toward the exit. Slow. Deliberate. Not this second. He couldn’t tell her that the exit was going to look different in a moment, if this worked, but he could give her the impression not to go _now_.

She frowned at him, but gave a bare, tiny nod, and as Zoisite kept trying to argue with the thing about philosophy of mind, Jadeite breathed, and cleared his own mind, and focused.

He reached down to the web (and in the periphery of his awareness, he saw how little time they had, how Zoisite and the alien dust were both stalling for time for their own reasons; it would be only minutes before the dust had its route into the Earth’s energy web, and everything might be lost), and reached out to that trace of gold, and with every bit of earnestness in him, he prayed.

It was not his own power. He had always had to shape a thing to bring it to a semblance of life, and there was nothing he had shaped here. It was not even his own will. He only appealed. Begged a favor. Asked both that great presence that was the Earth, and that distant hint of gold that spoke of his faraway prince, to lend the tiniest fraction of their own strength. To take this enclosed chamber that was Mercury’s water, and open it again to the vastness of the ocean, of another senshi’s realm, of the depths of the Earth where life rose of itself at the hydrothermal vents and at the interface between water and air.

He expected an earthquake. He expected to have to make some panicked attempt at rescue. He expected chaos.

He did not expect a sound to reverberate through his body like the grinding of bones in a giant’s mill.

The dust’s swirling patterns shifted. Mercury broke off midword, but it was impossible to see where her dead-black eyes were focused.

The sound came again, and this time built to a shattering snap and low roar. One side of the slender entranceway’s roof fell in a single block. Its wall collapsed behind it, no longer held upright, and ground and cracked on impact with its partner. Sand began to cloud the water.

The chamber’s wall slid outward and down, a silent avalanche of stone crumbling back into the sand and mud it had been born from.

Mars flung fire abruptly, not at Mercury, but behind her. Water bubbled and rushed, shoving them headlong toward the opening in the wall as it struggled to escape the chamber. Zoisite whirled, caught at Mercury’s dust-decorated arm, and kicked alongside it and her; Jadeite shoved himself away from the floor and helped push, and Mars came in an instant later.

Dust writhed. Caught at his feet, and came along for the ride, twisting itself about his ankles and calves in an unsettlingly familiar way. Zoisite’s yelp suggested that his hand and arm were getting the same treatment. But they were loose of the chamber.  


Kuroshio’s bulk shoved them aside, even as a current poured past them, sent them tumbling away again. The fast-moving water scoured the dust behind them from its hideaway, spat it out of the hollow in a vast cloud of sand and blackness.

Too much speed, too many shocks, too much heat in the steam-burst Mars had created. Jadeite lost the enchantment holding air for them; it joined the rush of bubbles heading surfaceward. He held onto what he had and kicked upward, trying not to let the dust puppeting Mercury kick him loose, or tangle him in Zoisite’s feet and legs, or put one of Mars’ heels in his eye. Lungs burned, skin burned, everything burned—

Something immense and scaled and strangely colored in the clouded blue of the water dove past them, and they tumbled again, pulled down in its wake. Then slammed into its back, hard, as it rose again beneath them.

The Red Dragon broke the surface and pulled them with it, three coughing and gasping, one pressing her face down against it. Black tendrils spilled out from behind her eyelids, worming their way under the scales.

Still unable to speak, Mars held up a hand, and in a flash of fire a precisely inscribed scrap of paper appeared in it. She slapped the ofuda down on Mercury’s forehead—then shoved the tiara into place on top of it. Firelight and pure blue radiated from the gem, less warring with one another than dancing.

Mercury dropped limp on the Red’s back and spat out a mouthful of water. The dust wisped into smoke, and was gone.


	9. Jadeite and the Consequences

“So how’d you clean up the rest of the mess?” Nephrite asked, low-voiced, where they stood among the new and growing greenery beyond the shining walls of Serenity’s stronghold.

Jadeite shrugged. “I sure as hell didn’t,” he muttered back. “Kuroshio kept the rest of the dust confined in something kind of like a whirlpool till Mars had recovered enough that she and Zoisite could pull that stunt of theirs again, with Mercury helping to keep it from just doing the steam thing this time, and clear all of it up. Zoisite’s dragon even cooperated. Apparently he’s got even more of a grudge against invaders than he does against everybody else.”

“So you were along for the ride in your own adventure, huh?”

“That’s me. At my best when I’m doing somebody else’s work.” Jadeite shifted. “Anybody else tell you it’s weird talking to you as a guy, after the last few hundred years of your shadow?”

“Nope. But Zoisite actually came and visited, and Kunzite would never say anything that indicated he thought my shadow was hot. So it’s just you. I won’t tell Mars.”

Jadeite made a fist, but to his other side Kunzite cleared his throat pointedly, and Jadeite glanced back toward the gate. Which was opening. Squabble forgotten, he straightened with the others, and settled to one knee in time with them. Like the old days. Like the centuries apart had never happened.

The Senshi came first, arraying themselves before the Shitennou like the guardians they were. Behind them, Serenity and Endymion paced side by side in white and silver and gold, and paused together to survey their guests. Four men, kneeling, in the varying and colorful clothing Elysion had given them. Four dragons, more varied still: Kuroshio’s blues and flame-color rising out of the water, beside Nephrite’s partner glistening black; the Red Dragon perched in its perennial combative irritation to flank Zoisite, and Kunzite’s counterpart, seemingly made of coiled smoke and shifting shadows, two heads watching Serenity and Endymion from different angles, one keeping a wary eye on Kunzite himself. There might have been more. Jadeite thought he’d seen eyes, earlier. But he didn’t dare lift his head or turn to look.

In the quiet, he could hear the susurrus of Serenity’s whisper to her husband, and then a single set of footsteps.

He knew. He knew Mamoru; he knew the way they’d gotten to know one another in the years they’d spent as four spirits and one quiet human teenager. He knew from the moment that the Earth’s power had healed him, let alone answered his prayer, that they were welcome with him again.

And yet, in that moment, his gut still wound itself into a frozen knot of ice, because what Mamoru wanted to do and what Endymion could do were not always the same thing. There were the Senshi to consider. There was reasonable caution, when the stakes went far beyond Mamoru’s own person—

“I understand,” Endymion said quietly, “that Helios and Elysion interfered. That you were given human bodies again, on the condition that you use them to protect the Earth while we were distracted. Is that correct?”

Kunzite spoke for them; none of the other three would have dared. “Nearly correct. We cannot possess bodies of our own without risking corruption. Therefore these were lent to us, and do not remain ours; they may be revoked at any time. As they should be, once the need for our assistance is past.”

Back to an existence as spirits bound to gems. There were, Jadeite admitted to himself, worse things. Mercury had just been through one, to start with.

“Well,” Endymion said, but there was a lightness in his tone, something that was bright rather than resigned. “What would the four of you say to an _extended_ loan?”

Jadeite managed to keep his head down; but his eyes opened, and he snuck a look at Endymion. Alas, Endymion’s legs were not a good way to read his expression.

Kunzite took a moment to respond. “Do you believe that Helios would be willing to enable such a thing?” His tone implied what he did not say: Helios, who lived in the ruins. Helios, who knew better than even the Senshi what the Shitennou had made of themselves, before Mamoru drew them back to their senses. “Or the Senshi to accommodate it?”

“I think,” Endymion said more seriously, “that the Earth is a very large place, and six of us are not going to have an easy time of trying to help it put itself back together. Ten would be better. Fourteen, if your, uh, friends there decide to stay.”

Describing the Red Dragon, or Kunzite’s partner, as a _friend_ to anything momentarily hurt Jadeite’s brain.

“The problem is,” Endymion continued, quieter, “that would make your being here conditional on whether you kept working with us. And I don’t want to do that. If you stay, if you’re part of our team, I want it to be because you _want_ to. I don’t know how to give you back that choice. Not yet. But that’s the thing about extended loans. When we figure out a better way to handle this, we can always … renegotiate terms.”

Kunzite exhaled, slowly, and Jadeite mirrored what he knew Kunzite had to be doing in that moment: looking over the Senshi, from one to another. Mercury, with her inward-turned body language, taking up as little space as she could rather than challenging Zoisite, everything of her subtly angled toward Serenity. Venus, one hand on her hip, her posture and her bright eyes a silent dare toward Kunzite: _if the four of you are honest about this, then own it; if you’re not, then own that, too, and we’ll kick all of your butts back where you came from again._ Serenity, a sleeping pink-haired infant held in her arms, somehow still managing to have hands clasped and a brilliant smile. Jupiter, guardedly hopeful, supremely confident. And Mars—

Mars was rolling her eyes again.

Jadeite closed his own eyes, and couldn’t hold back a grin.


	10. Mars and Someone Else's Doom

Mars waited to track Jadeite down again. He had a lot to do when the ceremonial part of the discussion wrapped up, after all. Surviving Nephrite’s version of celebration. Getting through Usagi knocking him down by leaping to hug him without warning him first. Not imploding in shyness or shame when Mamoru actually wanted to talk to him, personally, one-on-one. Getting ritually threatened by Venus—Mars was a little curious how much she’d mangle it, but not enough to visibly listen in. This time. Next time would be plenty.

When she did go hunting, she wasn’t surprised to find that Kuroshio had stretched up onto the shore, and Jadeite was sitting leaning against the curve of his side. She _was_ a little surprised to discover that someone had dropped Chibiusa on him.

“You’ve been conquered,” she informed him.

“I have completely been conquered,” Jadeite admitted. “And am desperately in need of help. I, uh. Hadn’t thought through the problem of there not being a supply of disposable diapers. It’s only a matter of time before I’m doomed.”

Mars smirked. “Your problem, not mine. Welcome to protecting the Earth. By keeping the baby clean and not wailing so Usagi and Mamoru can concentrate.”

“And by making maps. Mercury and Mamoru are scheduling with each of us so they can pinpoint where the settlements we were protecting are. Maybe one of _them_ will have diapers.”

“Sure. Cloth ones. And guess who gets to do the laundry?”

“Zoisite?” Jadeite ventured.

Of all the things Rei had expected from this conversation, the one she hadn’t foreseen was herself, laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to:
> 
> einahpets, for, I repeat once more, the Amazing Art
> 
> CopperCrane2, for Red Dragon advice
> 
> and smokingbomber, for eternal and sometimes emergency beta
> 
> Several hundred additional thanks to everyone who was understanding with my RL situation (and willing to swap with me for later posting dates!)


End file.
